A reader responded to my last story about an organization that tried having three co-leaders but ultimately decided that they wanted one CEO instead of three. This reader has been in a for-profit partnership — which is the same as co-leadership — for over a decade. He shared his thoughts about what makes his partnership work and provided ideas for organizations considering a co-leadership model.

Co-Leadership Can Work – But Be Cautious

As told by a Partner somewhere in the US.

I have had a successful co-leadership experience in a relatively small for-profit professional services company. We call it a professional partnership, but in essence, it is co-leadership. Both of us share equal accountability for the organization’s success. The “buck” stops with both of us. We started the company more than 10 years ago and the partnership continues to this day.

I have also worked at medium and large corporations and served on a half dozen nonprofit boards, so I have some insight into how more traditional structures of both for-profits and nonprofits work. I think learning from both my corporate and partnership experience can apply to the nonprofit sector.

Overall, I believe a successful co-leadership arrangement depends on a variety of factors, and failure in any of them can spell trouble. You need great chemistry, and you must respect each other. You need compatible but complementary expertise and skillsets. And while both leaders should be self-confident, it’s important that neither has an overbearing ego. The leaders must be accountable to each other – not just to an external board. And, finally, you need to plan ahead. That said, I would be very cautious about using this structure in a nonprofit.

Chemistry and Respect Are Critical

The chemistry between co-leaders is absolutely critical. In my case, my partner and I sometimes spend more time together than we do with our spouses. That’s not something you want to do with someone you don’t enjoy. We can and do talk about lots of things beyond our work. I think that is vital to a successful close partnership.

Another key to our success is the respect and trust we  have for each other. We had known each other for some time and had collaborated on a challenging project together before we decided to start the company. This experience gave us a strong foundation. Sometimes things at work go well. Sometimes they are super stressful. Usually, we agree on how to approach a situation, but not always. Because we respect each other, we know we can navigate any situation. When our viewpoints differ, we are able to talk things through and ultimately come to alignment.

Compatible and Complementary Skills and Expertise

After chemistry, having complementary capabilities is the second most important thing to successful co-leadership. Skillsets and expertise need to be compatible but not identical. If each leader brings essentially the same skills to the table, you are going to end up clashing. Whereas if you bring different things, you can create a division of responsibility that aligns with each leader’s strengths.

My partner and I started our organization together. We are founding partners. He and I have different areas of responsibility. We make tough decisions together. But we also work independently. We have confidence that the other is doing what needs to get done. We don’t look over each other’s shoulders. There’s trust.

Self-Confidence Without Ego

I talked earlier about chemistry. I would go a little bit further and say that there also needs to be ego alignment. And related to this is self-confidence. If there is a mismatch, you will end up with problems. I’ve seen this problem in other organizations. I don’t think co-leadership would work if one leader is insecure and the other is overly confident or if one has a big ego that is hard to satisfy. As a co-leader, you need to have self-confidence. You also need to be comfortable letting your partner shine. If you are anxious about your performance relative to your partner or if you are competitive and feel you always need to outdo or get more credit, the co-leadership arrangement will not work.

Accountability to Each Other

We also feel accountable to each other. We answer to each other and know we cannot let the other down. This accountability is critical. Based on my experience in this and other organizations, I know that mutual accountability generates confidence in both easy and hard times. In a startup or growing organization, it’s critical for co-leaders to know they have each other’s back; that each is accountable to the other and to the success of the organization.

Plan Ahead for How to Manage Conflict

Another thing to consider is managing conflict. In a nonprofit with co-leaders, if there is a conflict around strategy, the co-leaders would go to the board, which sets strategy. Having a board resolve strategy misalignment is not ideal but is conceivable. However, it is not clear what happens if the conflict is around something operational. A mechanism for that would have to be decided ahead. I think bringing operational issues to the board is a bad idea. In my case, we have a partnership agreement. We have agreed ahead that we will go to a specific person, whom we named in advance, if we have a substantive conflict we cannot resolve. We have worked together for more than a decade and have not had to do this. We hope we never have to. But we did plan for it.

Be Clear with Staff

To be successful as co-leaders, you also need to be clear with your staff. They need to know who is in charge of making decisions and who they are accountable to. In my case, each employee has a specific supervisor based on their job. That employee is accountable to that partner and the partner is accountable for the success of the staff that works for them. If staff don’t know who they work for or if they perceive one co-leader as stronger, they will gravitate toward the stronger person. And the weaker leader will end up feeling inferior, insecure, or ineffective. It won’t be a stable situation.

Considerations for a Nonprofit: Turnover, Accountability, and Governance

I don’t know how it would work for an outside group like a nonprofit board to bring two leaders  together and expect or hope (or worse yet, demand) that the chemistry work. I think it would also be hard if one of the co-leaders left and the board decided they wanted to hire someone else into a co-leadership position. The two leaders would have to see if they had chemistry. They would have to build trust and respect over time. It would be hard for the newly hired person to feel equal to the one who had been there initially. When an organization faces stressful situations – funding problems, staffing issues, external challenges – it helps to have a personal history with  your partner to fall back on. So, a nonprofit founded by two co-leaders who have chemistry and passion, could work. But I do not see how it could be successfully mandated by a board, and I can’t see the situation being sustained after one co-leader moves on.

Also, in a nonprofit, the co-leaders would have to be clear with the board who is on the line if budgets are not met, if fundraising does not go well, if programs don’t have expected impact. These are the lifeblood of any nonprofit. The board needs to know who is accountable. Or the board would have to hold each accountable together and be clear that they would have to replace them both if things don’t go to plan. Anything else would cause anxiety and lack of alignment.

The situation around accountability in the nonprofit space is exacerbated by having a volunteer board. Even the most passionate and committed nonprofit boards are mostly hands-off. They focus on determining strategy, managing the CEO, maybe fundraising. I think that creating a novel organizational structure, which has the complexities of people’s trust, egos, accountability, role clarity, and so on without a hands-on oversight would be challenging and would definitely put the organization at higher risk of failure.

If a nonprofit board wants to try a novel structure, I advise finding a way to evaluate how well the players work under pressure well in advance of a co-leadership org architecture. Co-leadership is most stressed when the organization faces challenges, and every organization will face challenges that assess leadership in a big way every year or two.

Lessons Learned

• Co-leaders need chemistry, respect, and trust – preferably due to a history that precedes being co-leaders.
• Having compatible and complementary skills reduces conflict.
• Co-leaders need to be self-confident, without a big ego.
• Co-leaders need to be accountable to each other.
• Plan ahead to manage conflict.
• Be crystal clear with staff.
• Don’t do it unless you have no other choice, and then think again.